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On the “Philosophy” of “Dialectical Materialism”

Lenin was completely wrong when he stated in his classic work, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, that 'All these people could not have been ignorant of the fact that Marx and Engels scores of times termed their philosophical views dialectical materialism.'

By Jason Devine

April 20, 2016 -- Submitted by the author to Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- It has and continues to be argued that Marxism has a philosophy and that such philosophy is termed dialectical materialism. It is further argued that historical materialism is the result of the application of dialectical materialism “to the study of human society.” To put it into very simple terms, these formulations take the form of a basic math equation:

Dialectical Materialism + Social Reality = Historical Materialism

However, no matter how it is stated, it is not so. To be more precise, while we can make a theoretical distinction between what we call dialectical materialism and historical materialism, they are in fact two sides of the same coin; or rather one and the same thing.